AR Theater

Real life footage of what happened to show reality and gravity of situation.

Zoomed in on "target" as a drone via AR

Initial flight of the drone via AR

Inspiration: I was deployed to Afghanistan and experienced drone warfare first hand. I saw how disconnecting drone warfare was due to the fact that

What it does: It is a rough demonstration of what I want to achieve in Theater. I want to show both sides of war along with the human sides of war. I want to show the complexities of human interaction despite the distance brought by technology. I want to show how technology distances people from their actions and depersonalizes terrible actions in war. It is an augmented reality app to simulate the audience being the drone pilot flying around their area of operation. It has a button to allow them to zoom in further and then to either give them a choice to engage their target or not. It then does a brief overview showing both sides of their decision (shortened to meet the 3 minute time constraints).

How I built it: I used Unity to build both the android and PC app. I used Maya to model. I used Globalmapper and open source satellite imagery and Digital Elevation Maps to build the terrain. I used Meshlab to convert the DEM to XYZ point dot format and connected all the dots to form a mesh to import into Maya. I used Maya to texture the terrain with actual satellite imagery matched perfectly to the model. I used Vuforia to tie in the AR with Unity. I used Maya to build models of houses and the people. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the videos. I used Christen Lien's assets to help drive the emotion of the video.

Challenges I ran into: No one was interested in my project, and I have very limited dev and 3d modeling experience. I had no experience in AR, Unity, or model rigging and had to teach myself as I built the application.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of: I taught myself Unity and AR and built a fully functioning product by myself.

What I learned: I need to explain the purpose of my project up front so that the audience won't be caught off guard.

What's next for AR Theater: I want to take this to an actual theater and work with other individuals passionate about tech mixed with theater arts.

Further Description: No coding to post on GitHub as all was done on Unity.